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Red Hat Ceph Storage vs VMware vSAN comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Everpure FlashArray
Sponsored
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
233
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (2nd)
Red Hat Ceph Storage
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
27
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (3rd), File and Object Storage (2nd)
VMware vSAN
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
233
Ranking in other categories
HCI (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

Software Defined Storage (SDS) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Red Hat Ceph Storage9.4%
DataCore SANsymphony6.7%
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI)6.5%
Other77.4%
Software Defined Storage (SDS)
HCI Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
VMware vSAN7.8%
VxRail9.3%
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI)9.0%
Other73.9%
HCI
 

Featured Reviews

Sowjanya MV - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Lead at Wipro Limited
Has improved performance for mission-critical workloads and enabled seamless non-disruptive upgrades
The availability is 99.99%, which is the main factor any customer would need because their data should be available whenever they want to access it. This is one main critical thing. It is very easy to upgrade since Pure Storage FlashArray handles it well. Everything is non-disruptive now; previously, there were forklift shifts, but now that is not the case. Pure Storage FlashArray says no to forklift upgrades. Usually hardware requires downtime, but Pure Storage FlashArray has improved their footprint so that they are not asking for downtime; everything is just a non-disruptive activity, which is why customers are more inclined towards Pure Storage FlashArray. Customers want more of the models in their environment due to the performance they are giving, and everything is in one Pure1 Array console where we can view all the models on one page or just an orchestration tool. You don't miss anything; you have replication, notifications about replication, and details about which host groups replication is happening in and if that replication is successful or failed. On a daily basis, our purpose is to create volumes for infrastructure; our daily activities include creating volumes and mapping them to the host, doing any migrations from a VM, clearing the data stores, and carving the volumes to those VMs. One key factor is the data compression with a ratio of 5:1, focusing on space efficiency, inline deduplication, and the compression Pure Storage FlashArray works on; that is a major factor we can suggest to any customer. Analytical capabilities are crucial. Daily, we check the throughput and consumption, and Pure Storage FlashArray provides predictions for one year regarding usage. This prediction helps plan updates well ahead. For support, we just raise a case, and they follow up and get it done. There is also AI readiness, but with the model R2, we don't have much of that AI readiness. For others, we do have AI readiness that predicts capacity based on daily or monthly trends, enabling us to analyze how much space we need or if we need to expand the disk shelf. From an operational point of view, a good feature is that if you accidentally delete a volume, it will be retained in the destroyed state for the next twenty-four hours, which is not the same with any other vendor. I have worked in this storage domain for the past fifteen years, and this option is remarkable, benefiting any L1 or L2 engineer. Additionally, from a compliance perspective, Pure Storage FlashArray has REST APIs enabled. I have not explored automation much, but from a security standpoint, it is strong with encryption data. If you want to automate, you can easily integrate with all clouds and explore Pure Cloud for scheduling workloads, including volume creation. Customers find benefit in Pure Storage FlashArray's single management pane of glass due to the dual controller and active-active setup. If one of the controllers goes down, all workloads automatically shift to the other controller, ensuring their data is safe and accessible at all times. This is a highlighted feature that any customer desires because their data should always be accessible. For SAN workloads, we use Pure Storage FlashArray because for SAN FC fiber channel, we don't use it; we use NetApp for NAS activities. We have clearly split this, so SAN is for mission-critical applications, while network-attached storage handles file systems. This architecture helps us maximize the benefit from Pure Storage FlashArray due to the significant workloads from this giant retail client. From a footprint and energy consumption perspective, you can see energy consumption from the Pure1 storage portal on a daily basis, and it is very compact. The three models we use consume only three units, which is quite low. From a footprint and data center perspective, it doesn't occupy much space. As everything moves to cloud, there are requirements to avoid excess spending on data centers, and Pure Storage FlashArray is efficient in energy consumption and is environmentally friendly.
Rifat Rahman - PeerSpot reviewer
Infrastructure Architect & CEO at Tirzok Private Limited
Offers reliable performance and availability for large deployments
I would like to see improvements in Red Hat Ceph Storage not because I necessarily think it needs improvement, but because I generally prefer to do things manually rather than following the containerization part. Current deployments are based on containers, but I deploy manually with my scripts and controls. If there are no Kubernetes-like requirements, I often prefer to deploy a whole manual process. I don't ask for improvements in the deployment model because Red Hat has its own philosophy about making things, but it's my personal choice that I prefer things manually. Some features are available only in the containerization part, so if those are also available in manual deployment, that will help.
ShyamikaThamel - PeerSpot reviewer
Associate Tech Specialists at Seatrium
Managing mixed RAID workloads has improved data protection and delivers strong performance
VMware vSAN can be improved in certain areas. In cases involving our large data stores with large VMs, we experience some latency, not during normal operation, but during database backup operations. We observed latency due to buffer issues from the top-of-the-rack switches. These issues are mostly network-related because all storage data traffic travels through the network. I have recently used Nutanix, and I observed that Nutanix provides better performance than VMware vSAN due to its data locality features. VMware vSAN is now providing data locality, but we did not use that option. If VMware vSAN provides additional features in the next release, such as the VM balancing feature called DRS on the cluster that VMware previously had, it would be beneficial. With DRS, VMs can move easily from one node to another within the same cluster. Nutanix does not provide that flexibility. When placing a VM on a cluster in Nutanix, the placement uses a balancing component. After that, the VM remains on the same host. If any contention occurs on the CPU or memory side, the VM stays in place until contention happens. If issues occur, the VM migrates to another host while transferring all objects to the same host. This is how their data locality is maintained. When a VM moves to any host, it moves with all VM objects. VMware vSAN does not currently offer this option. If a VM moves to another host, it accesses the disk object through the network, which increases latency. VMware vSAN now offers an option to select data locality, but it does not function like Nutanix. This is why some latency remains. If VMware vSAN can improve this feature, it would be very helpful and VMware would regain its top position.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Despite the overuse of buzzwords and re-classifications, the storage industry has actually seen dramatic improvements over the last 3-4 years."
"It is fast and reliable. It works."
"When you put all of the features in a box, leverage them and migrate your application to one of these arrays, it will give you a lot of benefits."
"It saved a lot of space, as far as physical space in our data center."
"Most of the problems that we had in the past with the performance in IOPS have disappeared. It has been a great improvement for our customers' services."
"The most valuable features of Pure Storage FlashArray are simplicity, ease of use, and dashboard management."
"For an organization, it can take storage from 40 terabytes down to five terabytes."
"I use all the features of this solution and I find them to be easy to use and functional, such as the compression and capacity to expand."
"We use the solution for cloud storage."
"I like the distributed and self-healing nature of the product."
"Red Hat Ceph Storage is working exactly as it should be; it's running in the background, it's working, and it doesn't bother me."
"Red Hat Ceph Storage is a reliable solution, it works well."
"The product allows our OpenStack environment to move away from the classic network type of backend storage and enables increased resilience using commodity hardware pricing, which is a major benefit."
"I would definitely recommend Red Hat Ceph Storage. It is a complete solution for cloud-native storage needs."
"Ceph has simplified my storage integration. I no longer need two or three storage systems, as Ceph can support all my storage needs. I no longer need OpenStack Swift for REST object storage access, I no longer need NFS or GlusterFS for filesystem sharing, and most importantly, I no longer need LVM or DRBD for my virtual machines in OpenStack."
"It's possible that we should have used the solution a long time ago as it appears to cost the business less money to run some of our data systems using it."
"It is easy to work with, easy to handle, and easy to manage."
"This product has very good performance when it comes to virtualization storage and works well with solutions such as SAP HANA, Exadata, Hadoop, and Big Data Analytics."
"I like this solution because policies (such as resiliency) are applied per virtual disk instead of applied on an entire volume."
"The simplicity, as well as the integration with virtualization."
"In a production environment, these features ramp up the provisioning, security and provides faster deployment."
"It is easy to deploy and great for virtualization."
"It is simple to manage, very easy to implement and troubleshoot in case of any failures."
"Currently, I believe VMware provides some of the best virtualization, security, storage, and operational solutions on the market."
 

Cons

"The solution is not cheap."
"Everything has been good, but we faced one issue last year while migrating volumes from one Pure Storage to another. The snapshots were not visible in the Veeam backup portal."
"I would not say anything because we still do not use Everpure FlashArray fully."
"Storage. There could be better storage."
"I would like to have support available in Spanish."
"In the configuration, which we brought in or tested it in, it has a very limited config as far as the array goes. That said, it still did more than our anticipation."
"Based on my experience with various technologies like EMC, NetApp, and Pure Storage, one area for improvement is compliance certifications. NetApp excels in this area, particularly in the American Army or defense sector, where NetApp has approval, whereas others are striving to achieve the same. NetApp also delivers security, ransomware protection, and scale-up capabilities more effectively."
"If there is one thing that I did not appreciate about Pure, it is that between the two different lines, which would be FlashBlade and Everpure FlashArray, there is no easy way to migrate LUNs as far as being able to replicate across those platforms."
"It would be nice to have a notification feature whenever an important action is completed."
"I have encountered issues with stability when replication factor was not 3, which is the default and recommended value. Go below 3 and problems will arise."
"Areas of Red Hat Ceph Storage that have room for improvement include more promotion. Many people do not know about the Stratus case, which is one of the most reliable systems available in the world, but they are not aware that a system can keep working even if there is a hardware failure."
"We have encountered slight integration issues."
"I have not identified any drawbacks, however, the response to public platform inquiries could be faster."
"Ceph does not deal very well with, or takes a long time to recover from, certain kinds of network failures and individual storage node failures."
"An area for improvement would be that it's pretty difficult to manage synchronous replication over multiple regions."
"If you use for any other solution like other Kubernetes solutions, it's not very suitable."
"The price for the hard drive, for vSAN, is very expensive."
"One thing in vSAN that I would like to improve is using vSAN as a repository for files or other things. For example, with Horizon, maybe we can save profiles with UEM on there. That would be a good feature that I would like."
"Licensing costs are a little too high for smaller sized companies."
"The management platforms have some gaps. It's difficult to see what's going on with the hardware at times."
"VSAN currently has no data deduplication, and having such a feature would both be an improvement and provide a feature that Nutanix has."
"The only thing is that as we were early adopters, we found tech support was difficult to deal with because our hardware was Cisco, and they didn’t know what we were talking about."
"It is an expensive solution."
"Dedupe in non flash drives can be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pure is not a cheap product. It is not something that is inexpensive. But, the total cost of ownership tends to be lower than with other solutions, because you don't need a lot of expertise, you don't need a lot of training or very expensive engineers or very expensive consultants."
"Pure has been flexible with us on the pricing models."
"We lost a lot of customers because we couldn't compete on price with other vendors."
"Because the price is a bit higher than other products, the data reduction equalizes the price with amount of the data reduction."
"It was less expensive than some of the alternatives. It's not as though it was a premium price to get that kind of quality. It's a very competitive product from a price perspective..."
"We have seen a reduction in the TCO, because Pure Storage is partnering with Belfrics. This partnership reduces our latency and space."
"Pure Storage FlashArray is expensive."
"For pricing, you have to take into account their performance on deduplication and compression in a $/GB comparison."
"We never used the paid support."
"The price of this product isn't high."
"If you can afford a product like Red Hat Ceph Storage then go for it. If you cannot, then you need to test Ceph and get your hands dirty."
"The price of Red Hat Ceph Storage is reasonable."
"The other big advantage is that Ceph is free software. Compared to traditional SAN based storage, it is very economical."
"There is no cost for software."
"I rate the product’s pricing an eight out of ten."
"The operational overhead is higher compared to Azure because we own the hardware."
"The first 1-2 years of purchasing vSAN will be expensive. Thereafter, the longer you are running it, the more cost savings you will have."
"We did consider other hyperconverged solutions. It usually came down to price. vSan was the most cost effective thing."
"The cost of VMware vSAN is reasonable."
"The product is quite expensive, regarding the open source solution."
"The vSAN is somewhat expensive to license."
"In comparison with other solutions, such as HP or Cisco, I find the solution to be quite pricey."
"The cost is expensive. I purchased two servers. The hardware cost was $19,000. The software cost for these two servers, including the vSAN, was $30,000, which is $11,000 more than the hardware. Then I had to pay another $5,000 for installation and implementation for professional services. In total, it was $54,000 for two vSAN Servers."
"The licensing cost is high and should be taken into account."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Construction Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business73
Midsize Enterprise38
Large Enterprise161
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business13
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise15
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business102
Midsize Enterprise56
Large Enterprise137
 

Questions from the Community

Which should I choose: HPE 3PAR StoreServ or Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform F Series?
Both are great platforms, but if you are considering all flash solutions, I would recommend you to consider Pure Stor...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashArray?
When comparing cost, I find that the cost is either the same or slightly higher, but that is returned by the ease of ...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashArray?
The only thing I think could be improved is price. The price is the main concern for our customers.
How does Red Hat Ceph Storage compare with MiniO?
Red Hat Ceph does well in simplifying storage integration by replacing the need for numerous storage solutions. This ...
What needs improvement with Red Hat Ceph Storage?
Areas of Red Hat Ceph Storage that have room for improvement include more promotion. Many people do not know about th...
What advice do you have for others considering Red Hat Ceph Storage?
I do not have experience working with solutions such as Red Hat Ceph Storage and StorPool. I have plenty of experienc...
What Is The Biggest Difference Between vSAN And VxRail?
While both run on the vSAN technology from VMware, vSAN needs to be deployed on vSAN ready nodes while VxRail is an e...
How does HPE Simplivity compare with VMware vSAN?
HPE SimpliVity is a hyper-converged infrastructure solution that is primarily geared to mid-sized companies. We resea...
How does VMware vSAN compare with Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct?
We found VMware’s vSAN was easy to set up, configure, and manage compared to other solutions we considered. It is bes...
 

Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashArray
Ceph
vSAN
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
Dell, DreamHost
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